The Third-Century Usurpation and Fourth-Century Burial of Aureolus

As a prominent cavalry commander and usurper during the reign of the emperor Gallienus, Aureolus was an important figure of the mid-third century ad, but many details of his failed revolt derive from the Lives of the Thirty Tyrants in the Historia Augusta. Instead of dismissing the account of his downfall and commemoration as historically unreliable, this article analyzes it within a fourth-century context of usurpation and civil war, and thus connects Aureolus’ burial to the contemporary world of the Historia Augusta.